


The Aftermath

by ladywaffles (JaneEyre)



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneEyre/pseuds/ladywaffles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Where Hero did cheat on Claudio and the repercussions of this on Beatrice and her relationship with Benedick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Diaphenia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaphenia/gifts).



> MERRY CHRISTMAS.
> 
> I really am sorry that this is not a happier fic.

Hero cheated.

Beatrice had been letting those word sink for a few days now. Pinky-in-the-air, tea-drinking, incapable-of-swearing Hero, her own cousin whom she thought she knew everything about had made a mistake - and not a small one at that. 

Hero’s sweetness was one of the only constants in Beatrice’s life. Not that she wasn’t sweet anymore, but she was now a “cheater”. Beatrice could still remember the agony on Hero’s face at her birthday party a week ago. Her trembling hands, the fidgeting while she was defending herself. Her firm conviction, shouting that she had done nothing wrong, that she could have never cheated on Claudio. All of this was a lie. 

Beatrice had spent hours reflecting on the situation. Whether or not there were any signs that Hero wasn’t happy with Claudio and that she wanted to get out of that relationship. Nobody suspected a thing, not even her, who knew her cousin better than anyone else. Or at least, that’s what she thought before. Beatrice’s ignorance was displayed on the internet for everyone to see and comment upon. She so ardently defended Hero – her loyalty and her sweetness – and it turns out that she was wrong and they were right. She really was the idiot. However, anyone would be wrong to assume she was angry at Hero for lying and cheating. She was his cousin and even if she lied, she did it out of the fear of retaliation, and history proved her right. Hero wasn’t a bad person, by far, and one mistake does not define a person. That, was Beatrice sure of. 

Lying on her bed, a blue blanket covering her feet, Beatrice was still wondering what she had missed. Even Frankenstein, laying on her stomach, couldn’t help her take her mind off the path of the “what if.” She figured music could maybe help her understand. It had a way of putting everything in perspective, as if the harmonies and the words were a canvas on which everything could be explained. Unfortunately for her lazy self, her iPod was downstairs, on the kitchen counter where she left it this morning. Weighing the pros and cons of getting out of bed, she decided that it was worth it. She had – in addition to music – games and Wifi access on her iPod. 

Left foot on the cold floor, the right one following soon after, and the lazy Beatrice was now sitting on the bed. Her hands pushing against the bed sheets, she jumped to her feet and slowly made her way toward the white door. As she was reaching for the knob, she heard three little knocks on her door. 

“Bea?” a distinctive male voice said, “Leo told me you –“ 

Beatrice’s eyes opened and a rare smile bloomed on her face. She opened the door to find herself face to face with a skinny tall boy with brown hair who was defying gravity. 

“-were in your room…” Benedick’s voice faded on the last part of his sentence, as he found himself face to face with Beatrice. 

They stood there awkwardly. Ben, with his hand up in his hair and Beatrice, arms crossed, looking down on her feet.  
“You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you, which explains the state I’m in”, remarked Beatrice.

Ben’s gaze went from her mismatched socks to her pajamas and then to the blond messy bun sitting on her head. He smirked.

“If you want, I can come back once you deem yourself worthy of my presence.”

Beatrice laughed a bit but Ben could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. It was their first time together since they had filmed the video – they had made the decision to cut their conversation at the end out of the video – and that he confessed that he liked her in a way that left out any ambiguous interpretation. They had discussed for hours after that – and maybe made out with each other a bit more – and decided, in light of recent events, to keep their newly formed relationship in the dark from everyone else. 

Which was fortunate because if Leo had known, Ben wouldn’t be standing under the porch of her bedroom door. 

Beatrice was the first the break the silence. It was an unusual situation for the both of them to be at a loss for words.

“Do you want to come in? Watch a movie, maybe?”

Both Beatrice and Ben were afraid that what was said and done between them the last time they saw each other was simply due to the vulnerability of the moment. That the feelings said out loud had been expressed out of loneliness and that they had come to regret them. After what happened with Hero, they had come to expect anything from anyone. 

“I thought that maybe we could talk?” answered Benedick, “After everything that happened, with Hero and with the filming of the last video, I feel like we need to – “

“We need to clarify some things and communicate a little bit better? “ Interrupted a grinning Beatrice. 

“Exactly.”

They sat down on the bed - the only available thing in the room to sit on with the exception of the floor, and nobody wants to sit on the floor when there is a comfortable bed available. Especially when you spent a considerable amount of time making out with the only other person in the room the last time you were both alone. Their back against the wall, they were close enough that anyone who’d enter the room would believe them to be more than just friends, but not close enough so that their hips and their legs were touching. 

Beatrice wanted more than anything, in this instant, to feel that Ben had been sincere in his affection and that he would take her hand. And so here she was, both hands in her lap, her head tilted back and her legs crossed, waiting for Ben to start talking. They had both benn wrong, and Beatrice was afraid that he was maybe angry at her for making him stand against his best friends. She was observing Ben to try to gauge what he was feeling, and what he wanted to say to her that couldn’t wait. He was mimicking her position and all Beatrice was seeing was the rapidly shifting eyes, the fidgeting of the hands and his controlled breathing. She didn’t know what to make of that.

He finally broke the awkward silence. “How’s Hero?”

Beatrice’s eyebrows went up in surprise: this was not a question she expected. 

She answered, unsure of what he wanted her to say. “She’s not doing that great. I mean, even if Claudio was indeed right, it excuses in no way his obnoxious douchebag attitude at the party. It was a private issue for a private conversation, not an occasion to air your dirty laundry for everyone to see.” 

Ben kept looking in front of him and then asked Beatrice how she was feeling. 

That was a question she expected and she replied. “I’m not sure. It’s been exhausting, trying to make sense of everything that has happened. I still don’t know why Hero would ever cheat on Claudio and if, somehow, I could’ve picked up on the signs that she wasn’t happy with him. I mean you saw the videos, the two of them together. The smiles, the laughs, the touching, there was nothing to indicate that she wasn’t infatuated with him. ”

At this point, Beatrice had difficulties holding back her tears and her fast breathing was shallow. 

She continued. “I feel so guilty for pushing toward a relationship she clearly didn’t want. It’s all my fault and –“

Ben moved his hand toward the palm of her right hand, entwining her fingers with his and didn’t let go. 

Beatrice was surprised at how open she’d been with Benedick. She usually never let her emotions get the best of her, but there they were, sitting next to each other, him listening to her pouring her heart out. It wasn’t supposed to be like that for them. They weren’t supposed to have fallen for each other. 

“Hero never told you why she did it?” Inquired Ben. 

Beatrice remembered clear as day how Hero confessed to her that she had lied to everyone at that party, including herself, and that she had kissed Robbie that night. 

It wasn’t long after she had posted “Idiots” that her cousin had come into her bedroom, her face all red and tears streaming down her face. It all went down in five minutes where she explained that she couldn’t take it anymore, that she couldn’t let Beatrice and Benedick and everyone else make fools of themselves defending what she knew was not the truth. 

“You should’ve seen her. She was trembling, stuttering and had to stop every few words to regain her breathing. She was clearly still shaken from everything that Claudio had said to her, the way he said it to her. I tried to get her to stay with me, but she wouldn’t let me. That was it,” she finished.

Ben took a deep breath and turned his head toward Beatrice, still holding her hand. He bit his lips and said “I still maintain that they were very much in the wrong just by the way Claudio decided to treat her. Everything we said in that video is still true. Hero is still one of the sweetest people I know and we were right to stand by her side even though we were in the wrong. And – and – “

Ben took a deep breath and by that silence Beatrice knew, hoped for, what he was about to say – or ask.

“and I hope you still mean what you said – what we discussed – after.”

Benedick moved his left hand, still intertwined with Beatrice’s, and added, with a grin on his face. 

“Clearly you still mean some of what you’ve said or I would’ve ended up with a slap on the face and not my hand in yours,” he joked.

Beatrice promptly removed her hand and punched Ben’s shoulder, prompting a slight scream from him. 

“Oh, it’s on, Beatrice,” said a suddenly not so quiet Benedick, emphasizing her name, “it is so on.” 

Beatrice raised one her eyebrows, an invitation to act upon his words. As Ben was reaching to tickle a now giggling Beatrice, they heard a small knock on the door and quickly stepped away from each other and off the bed. 

There was only one person Beatrice knew that knocked as shyly as this and it’s because of that fact that she almost tripped on her way to the door. 

“Hero.”

It was indeed her cousin, standing in front of her, in her pajamas, a blanket on her shoulder. Her face was swollen red and her hair was up in a ponytail. Her eyes were locked on the floor and with a brittle voice she stuttered, “I can’t bear being alone with my thoughts, I need to – oh”, she stopped as she was looking up and noticing a very discreet Benedick, half-hiding near the sunny window, “I’ll – I’ll come back later, sorry. I thought I had heard voices, but I figured it was just Leo’s friend downstairs.”

“I was just leaving”, he stated. “Hero, I still mean everything I said in the video. I don’t hate you. At all. Bye.”

Head down, Ben started to make his way between the two cousins. As he passed Beatrice, he accidentally brushed her arm and neither of them could deny the shivers and the butterflies in their stomach at the contact they both craved. 

As the last stomps of Ben’s descent on the stairs were heard, Beatrice hugged Hero and muttered into her ear, “All will be well.”


	2. Chapter 2

Hero was now sitting on the bed, at the exact same place that was occupied moments earlier by Ben. Her frail arms were hugging her knees and Beatrice could see from where she was standing that Hero was timing her breath. 

Inhale. Hold. One, two, tree, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Exhale slowly. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Repeat as needed. 

“I’m going to go downstairs and make some tea,” offered Beatrice, “and then you’re gonna talk and I’m gonna listen. Or I’m gonna talk and you’re going to listen. Or we’ll both talk. Anyway, I’ll be back shortly.”

As soon as she was out the door, she was already thinking about what type of tea she should choose.

“Definitively nothing with caffeine,” thought Beatrice, “or nothing with too much flavor.” 

Hero was always the one in charge of the tea. She was the housewife of the family. The cookies she made for her 16th birthday party were still on the counter, waiting to be devoured. With the party’s abrupt end, no one was in the mood to eat chocolate chips cookies no matter how good they knew they were going to be. 

In the kitchen, she was facing a cupboard filled with tea, organized by color – green tea, black tea, herbal, white tea, and rooibos – and labeled with confusing names that Beatrice was sure were made-up. There was Zealong, which she knew about, but also names such as Kerikeri. Hero usually just put the hot mug of tea in her hands while telling her that it was black tea – or any other color of tea – and thus Beatrice had no idea what to choose to soothe Hero. 

She delved through the boxes in the cupboard for inspiration – and for something she recognized – and finally found a box of chamomile tea. She vaguely remember Hero telling her that it was a great tea to calm anxiety and, bonus, the box had a label on the upper-right corner that said “Caffeine Free”. 

The noise from the rummaging and from the kettle brought in the kitchen her other cousin, Leo, Hero’s big brother. 

“Who’s the second mug for?” he asked, as Beatrice was pouring water. “I thought Benedick had left.”

“It’s for your sister,” dryly replied Beatrice, “you know the one who’s been crying for days in her room?”

“At least in her bedroom I can keep an eye on her, and she’s not doing God knows what with God knows who,” snapped Leo. “Claudio loved her and she didn’t even try to explain herself to him yet. She should feel shitty for what she did.”

“God, I can’t believe how idiotic you are. Hero doesn’t owe shit to anyone,” she countered. “Ugh.”

Because of the two cups of tea, one in each hand, Beatrice didn’t storm out as fast and angrily as she wanted to. After all, spilling boiling tea on herself would not feel so good but Beatrice had to admit that the idea of “accidentally” tripping and spilling the burning tea on Leo crossed her mind, but he didn’t deserve that much attention after seeing Hero’s state and still maintaining his position against her. 

She went through her open bedroom door and glanced at Hero. She hadn’t made a move. She was still counting, trying to calm herself and her hands were trembling. Beatrice noticed the dark bag under her eyes. 

“Here, it’s chamomile.”

Hero slightly lifted her head and straighten up her back against the wall to take the mug of tea between her hands.

“Thank you, that’s exactly what I needed,” murmured Hero.

Beatrice took the blanket that was resting on her computer’s chair and carefully took place perpendicularly from Hero, resting on the head of her bed, with the cup of tea in her hand. Hero was drinking small sips of tea at a time, and was slowly relaxing. Beatrice didn’t want to say anything to jeopardize what Hero might have to confess. She knew better than to push her. 

It didn’t take long for Hero to speak up. She put down her mug on her bended knees –protected by the bottom of her pajamas – and muttered: “I’m so sorry for anything I’ve put you through and for making you lie to everyone.”

The words were beginning to get stuck in Hero’s throat, making her voice a little bit wobbly.

“I never meant to hurt anyone, you know me, I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Oh, Hero,” sighed Beatrice while putting her cup of tea on the bedside table.

She reached for Hero’s cup – she didn’t want Hero to make a mess on the bed or burn herself – and put it down next to her. 

“Come sit next to me,” suggested Beatrice.

Hero slowly straightened up her knees and moved left to fit herself between Beatrice and the wall, against the fluffy pillow. She had always like how thick – yet so light- those pillows were. Beatrice put her arm around Hero, resting her cousin’s head on her shoulder. 

She had promised herself not to speak first but she couldn’t bear seeing Hero in this state. Hero was sweet but she wasn’t a pushover and her bubbly personality was all gone. 

“Hero,” Beatrice paused, “you have to know that I love you no matter what and that I am prepared to go after that asshat if he did anything to wrong you.”

Hero pushed herself a little bit higher on the bed – now almost sitting as the same height as Beatrice – and frowned. 

“Well, I mean, did he try to do anything – kissing, sex?” Beatrice said that last word as low as possible. 

“Anything – because I swear that if he did something to you, after what he did to you at your birthday party, I will really go after that dickface.”

Hero pushed Beatrice’s arm away and moved herself against the wall to face Beatrice, her eyes almost closed, head down. She took three deep and long breaths.

“Don’t do anything, Claudio doesn’t deserve any of this,” urged Hero, her voice suddenly more assertive. 

“It’s all my fault.”

Beatrice studied Hero’s face and saw that from the laid-back shoulder, the chin-up and the newfound tone in her voice, she did not lie: she really believed that it everything was her fault – and to an extent it was. After all, she did kiss Robbie, but knowing Hero, she had to have had a good reason. Hero couldn’t have possibly done something like this without straying too far from her true core. Beatrice hesitated. 

“Then… why did you cheat on Claudio, if he did nothing wrong?” 

Hero sighed and regained her composure to answer a question she had expected and prepared for. She locked eyes with her cousin, took another breath and started explaining everything. 

“I was tired of putting on a mask every morning. People have come to expect the sweetest things from me. It’s a tiring thing, trying to live up to people’s expectations of you. Sometimes I want to not do anything. I want to be able to say no but people expect me to say yes. They expect me to not swear, to stay innocent. It comes to a point where people don’t know the real you, the one you used to be before trying to please everyone. With Claudio, I felt trapped in a fake relationship. When you like someone, you want to be able to unwind and to be yourself with that person. I didn’t want to disappoint Claudio but he only ever knew the masked Hero. With the videos we’ve been making, it only added up to the number of people expecting me to act a certain way. I mean, you saw the comments under the video of the birthday party.”

“Yeah… why did you post that video if you knew it wasn’t the truth?,” blurted Beatrice. 

“Ben and I thought it was to expose Claudio’s behavior and to show you, defending yourself against something that wasn’t – at the time – true.”

“I – I- guess I wanted that video to be true,” acknowledged Hero, “ to have lived up to those expectations instead of letting people down.” 

Hero bended her knees and brought them closer to her, half-hiding her face into her pajamas. 

“I tried so hard to be the person everyone wanted me to be – the sweetest person they all knew – and it’s so much pressure, especially in a relationship. Robbie was just collateral damage. I don’t even… like him. He was just there when it all became too much. And I kissed him.” She paused to ponder. 

“Gosh, am I a bad person now? I cheated, I lied and wronged so many people.”

Her breathing was becoming increasingly faster and shorter, her eyes were damp and even though Hero was trying to conceal her emotions by hiding her face with her hands, Beatrice could still tell that she was deeply sorry and that she was about to burst into tears. 

“Even if, every day, you did put on the mask of the sweetest person,” reassured Beatrice, “you had to have had at least a little bit of good in you. Nobody can act that way and not have it be half-true.”

Hero yawned and put her head on Beatrice’s shoulder. 

“I love you no matter what, Hero. Whether you are the sweetest person on Earth or secretly Sauron in disguise,” teased Beatrice.

Hero lifted one eyebrow and half-smiled, a playful look on her face. It faded pretty quickly but Beatrice was happy to have got that reaction out of her after days of lethargy caused by Claudio’s outburst.

Not even five minutes later, her exhausted cousin’s eyes were closed and her breathing was finally regular. Beatrice didn’t want to disturb her, it must have been incredibly hard to let out a revelation as big as this one, one that implicated everyone in Hero’s life, including Beatrice herself. Had she really pushed Hero to act like someone she was not?


	3. Chapter 3

It had been three days since Hero’s second confession and Beatrice had not been able to stop thinking about what she said. She thought about all of the time she had presented Hero as “the sweetest person you could ever know.” 

People have this habit of introducing another person by a trait or a miscellaneous fact about them. 

“Here’s Benedick, he’s Scottish.”  
“Here’s Ursula, she likes to film people.”  
“Here’s Balthazar, he sings songs on Youtube.” 

She continued her walk, trying to get all of this out of her head.

It was winter here, but you could hardly call what was around Beatrice “winter.” There was only green at the horizon and Beatrice was sporting black shorts and a pale pink T-shirt. Usually, Hero walked with her but she still insisted on staying home to avoid confronting Claudio and his friends. 

She walked the rest of the way head down, mulling over her thoughts in her head. As soon as she arrived at school, she sat down on a cement block and tried to clear her mind with some reading for school. As soon as she heard the familiar ringing of the school bell, she lifted up her head and scrunched up her mouth. She reluctantly got up to enter the school with the hundreds of other students. 

Beatrice was dreading her first class because it was the only one she had in common with a tall pretty boy named Benedick. She had been dodging him since she last saw him three days past and she never answered his message on Facebook. She knew he would act like usual because of their agreement but she didn’t want to have to explain herself. 

When she had thought about what Hero had said in her bedroom, she had realized that she had been acting as if her friends’ personalities were trapped in a giant block of ice. She felt uneasy with this realization because it meant that maybe she didn’t know her friends at all. And maybe they didn’t know her at all. 

She was also starting to get what Hero had said about the expectations of people on the Internet. The last video they posted, over a week and a half ago, was “Idiots” and to her knowledge, Ben hadn’t posted one either because all the newest comments on the video were complaints about the lack of information about their life. 

Beatrice hadn’t realized that by starting the video, she would owe them an ending. For some people, their life was a work of fiction and –like in all works of fiction starring two teenage girls – the happy ending was the expected end. It would probably be that end for them, but not right away, not after everything they had been through the last week. 

Claudio was still hurt by Hero’s betrayal and would probably struggle to trust the next girl to come near him. On the other side, even though Hero was slowly getting better, she was still hurting from Claudio’s comment and the actions of his friends, including her own brother. Beatrice could see that Ben was torn between the two sides in the whole situation. On one hand, there was Claudio, who has been his friend for many years, and on the other side, he wanted to stand by the girl he was slowly falling for. 

Beatrice didn’t want to be responsible – even indirectly – for the demise of a friendship. Claudio never did anything wrong to Ben. 

Beatrice entered class W101 of Messina High School: beige walls and lots of desks aligned in four rows. The teacher was already sitting at his desk, as were about half the students. There was an unspoken rule about assigned places in the class which meant that Beatrice had to sit at her usual place, in the middle of the class. It also meant that Benedick, almost always late for the first class of the day, would be sitting on her right, the last place that had been available at the beginning of the year. 

Speaking of the devil, he was still not present when the familiar bell rang to announce the beginning of the first class. Beatrice’s shoulders went down a few centimeters and she brought up her tensed hands to the desk. Maybe he wouldn’t show up after all. It was unlikely because even thought he had been late more than enough times, he had only missed class once. Under all his clownish pretenses, Ben was actually a dedicated – save for the late arrival – student. He had jokingly claimed that it was his English roots – even though he was Scottish – that were forcing him to succeed and get into a great University. 

At the end of the hour-long class, Beatrice had grown worried by the empty chair next to her. The bell rang and she put her book and her pencil case into her bag, promising herself to at least check on him. He had probably missed his alarm and overslept.

She didn’t want to confess this but she was actually looking forward to seeing him. She wanted to know if her reflections would hold up in front of him. His absence today went to show that people can always surprise you, even if you think you know them. 

 

Beatrice was still worried at the end of the hour when she realized that she hadn’t seen Ben at all. He usually had lunch with Claudio, Pedro and Balthazar while she had hers with Ursula, Hero and Meg but there was only three of them at the boys’ table. They all used to eat together, but with Hero’s demise, they had separated themselves, even though they were mostly still friends. Pedro had chosen to stick with Claudio, Balthazar followed Pedro everywhere and Ben didn’t want to be the only boy left out. 

She went to the administration to take Hero’s assignments home. This had been her routine for the last week or so. Her cousin was officially on leave from school for “personal reasons” with an official paper from the doctor who thought it might be best for her to stay home an decide by herself when to go back. 

By the time she arrived at her house, she had decided to go see him, to make things clear for herself, and to check on him. Leo was at football practice and Hero was probably sleeping upstairs or reading quietly. She unlocked the white front door and opened it up just enough to put her backpack in the hallway. She closed the door, locked it and went back to the driveway to get into the car. As she sat in the driver’s seat, she thought it might not be the greatest idea, after all, to go see Benedick without having her feelings all sorted out. But this was the kind of day when you do stupid things and so she put the car in reverse and got out of the driveway.


	4. Chapter 4

Benedick was only living fifteen minutes away but it was enough time to make her consider –on multiple occasions – turning back around.

She parked in front of his house, a small two-story house in a quiet neighborhood. She went to the front door and knocked three times. The inside of the house was unusually dark. Had he skipped school to go somewhere else? Beatrice felt kinda stupid that she didn’t even think to text him before coming all this way. 

She knocked again. Still no answer. She decided to use the doorbell and upon doing so, she immediately laughed out loud. It was an unexpected rudimentary instrumental version of the famous “500 miles” song. 

Through the long window beside the door, she saw a light being turned on and then the characteristic noise of someone going down the stairs. Another light was turned on and she heard the familiar struggle of someone trying to unlock a door. 

Upon seeing the boy greeting her at the door, she checked the time on her phone. No, she wasn’t mistaken, it was indeed four o’clock. The boy in front of her was definitively not dressed like someone who should have been at school all day long. His hand shuffled his brown hair and he was squinting his eyes due to the sudden input of light. He was sporting pajama pants and an old Game of Thrones T-shirt. This was definitively the uncanny representation of someone who overslept by a great deal. 

"Beatrice?” mumbled Benedick, “What are you doing here?”

“I-I-Well you weren’t at school today and you never miss,” stuttered the very flushed Beatrice. 

“I overslept,” he stated. 

“I can see that,” laughed Beatrice. A smile appeared on Ben’s face but Beatrice could see that something was still bothering him. It wasn’t hard to figure out what. Beatrice looked at the ground and clutched her purse. 

“I am really sorry for my silence these last few days,” she continued, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and there are still things I have not figured out yet. About me, about you, about pretty much everyone.

“Well, if there is one thing we can learn from the whole thing with Hero and Claudio, it’s that good communication is key,” he said, still a little bit bitter from Beatrice’s silence. 

“Can I come in?,” asked Beatrice. 

“I’ll try to explain things.”

Ben nodded his head and slowly opened up the door, letting Beatrice in. 

 

They were sitting in front of each other. Ben was occupying the chair next to the bed while Beatrice was resting on the bed, sitting against the wall. She was clutching the other pillow. Over the silence, they both could hear the sounds of the cars passing the house. 

Beatrice was the first the break the silence. 

“I have been really confused,” hesitated Beatrice, “Hero said that she felt trapped – stuck - acting a certain way to fulfill expectations and she felt that her whole relationship with Claudio was based on a lie.”

Ben never stopped looking at her. He was soaking up every word, trying to understand what could have motivated her to stop talking to him after their “moments.” 

“I realized that I maybe have been pushing my expectations on people and on myself,” murmured Beatrice.

“I don’t want to go through the same realization that Hero did and find myself in the same situation.”

“Cheating?” coldly asked Ben. 

“No, I don’t think I could ever cheat.” 

She took a deep breath and added: “But I can’t be sure. Look at Hero. Nobody says that they know that one day, they are gonna cheat on their boyfriend – or girlfriend- but millions of people do.”

“I would never,” insisted Ben, “I know that.”

Upon hearing those words, Beatrice felt butterflies in her stomach but her head was still stopping her from doing something she knew she would regret, not without an answer. 

“Hero never thought she would either and yet, she did kiss someone who wasn’t her boyfriend,” she repeated. 

“You might find yourself in a situation where you realize that what you’ve wanted from your girlfriend is not was she’s offering or you might realize – like Hero – that you aren’t truly free in your relationship.”

Ben rolled the chair closer to the bed. He had a look of determination on his face. He also looked oddly relaxed. He put his elbows on his knees and took Beatrice’s hand, holding her palm between his hands. He took a deep breath. 

“Look. If I remember correctly, at least on my part, we were never afraid of being ourselves with each other. You didn’t like me very much when you started your videos and I wasn’t too keen on you either.”

Beatrice smiled. He continued, still playing with her fingers. 

“I’ve said it already and I’m gonna say it again. I like you. A lot. Just the way you are and-“

Beatrice couldn’t help herself. “Just the way you are,” she sang, softly. 

Ben smirked. “Are you gonna let me finish?”

She nodded. He licked his lips and continued. 

“So yeah, I like you. And I never want you to feel trapped. So if that’s what you’re feeling right now, just tell me and I’ll forget all about kissing you, ever. Even if I was pretty great at it.”

Beatrice bit her bottom lip as she recalled their last make-out session. She was starting to think that he was right. They didn’t really like each other at the beginning and thus never felt entitled to act a certain way around each other. 

“I don’t want to. Not right now anyway,” tentatively said Beatrice, “I just feel that it’s all a bit… rushed.”

“So what do you propose? Friends?” Ben gulped. 

This certainly wasn’t what he wanted but he was not the kind of guy to push her into a direction she wasn’t sure she wanted to take. 

“No!” exclaimed Beatrice, “I mean I like you too. Also a lot. I just want to make sure I’m comfortable with you, and you are comfortable being yourself around me before taking things any further.”

“So what does that means?” a confused Ben asked, “No more make-out sessions? Because I kinda liked that a lot.”

Beatrice hadn’t thought that far.

“I’m not sure, yet. We just have to take things slow, as they come and figure out the rest later, together.”

Ben smiled. 

“Alright. We’ll do things your way. As long as I get to see you and not be ignored for days,” he teased. 

Amazingly, for the last few minutes, he had never let go of her hands and she felt safe. She had been worried for nothing but she was very comfortable with her decisions. She was still in the process of evaluating the impact of Hero’s confession in her life but she finally knew – at least – that she was going in the right direction with Ben. 

Her gaze was suddenly attracted to a flash of bright pink, an unexpect colour to find amongst a man’s possessions. Ben interrupted her daydreaming. 

“You know what I’ve been meaning to do for a wee bit of time?”, said Ben.

“If I could read minds, the conversation we had earlier would have never taken place,”answered Beatrice, “and you would have never asked that in the first place because of what I have been thinking about doing.”

Ben’s left eyebrow went up and he opened up his mouth wide.

“Oh, you little scheming Beatrice.”

“If you call that someone who’ve been thinking about the best way to kidnap and destroy that awful pink flamingo you inexplicably have sitting on your shelf between your Star Wars and your Game of Thrones figurines and that I have inexplicably never seen before -”

Ben untangled his fingers from Bea’s and loudly gasped with both hands in front of his mouth. 

“You wouldn’t” 

“Then yes, I am what you’ve just called me.”

Ben quickly got up and pushed the rolling chair – who made a very loud banging noise – against his bedroom door and quickly covered the steps necessary to protect his beloved flamingo. 

Ben tightly hugged it with his left arm and said, while stroking its plastic plumage, “Floyd’s precious. He is the Groot to my Rocket, the Chewbacca to my Han Solo, the TARDIS to my Doctor, the –“, 

Beatrice tilted her head to the side, the right side of her mouth went up a little and her eyebrows joined in the middle as she interrupted Ben: “Oh, the flaming flamingo has a name. That is so cute.”

“For your information, he happens to be a very good listener and you have never seen him before because he got into a little accident. There is no telling what I might do –or turn into – without his precious counsel.” 

Ben carefully dusted the shelf and put down Floyd in his rightful place, carefully. He moved Gandalf in front of the feet, to hide the apparent hot glue that had helped fix his precious after a little mishap. 

Beatrice had now moved to the side of the bed, sitting on her hand. Ben moved back the chair next to the bed and fell in it.

“Let’s forget the fact that you just basically described a plastic flamingo as a live-in boyfriend,” teased Beatrice.”

At least the whole thing served to remind me that I still need to see Guardians of the Galaxy.”

And for the second time in five minutes, Ben jumped out of his chair – still making a loud banging noise as it crashed against the door – and practically SCREAMED at Beatrice. 

“WHAT?” 

“I know,” Beatrice laughed, “ but with the preparation for Hero’s birthday and then everything onward, I never really found the time – or someone – to go see it.”

Ben looked at her in disbelief and took both her hands into his. He looked directly into her eyes.

“No, no, I will not accept that,” joked Ben, “We need to do something about this. Is it taking it slow if I buy tickets for tonight?” 

“Since that’s what thirteen year-olds would do as a first date,” snarked Beatrice, “I’d say it’s pretty safe to assume that it’s taking it slow.” 

Ben shook his head and broke contact with Beatrice to bring his hand up as support for his head. His index finger resting along the line of his face, he said: “Oh well, in that case do you think we should ask Hero to chaperone us?”

Beatrice suddenly looked down and bit her lips. 

“Oh God,” realized Benedick. 

He paused for an instant and added: “Well, we could always ask her if she wants to come with us. It might do her some good to get out of the house.”

Beatrice sighed. “I’d like that very much but I’ve been trying to bribe her out of the house for the last few days without any results. But it’s worth trying. I’ll text her.”

She got up from the bed and picked up her purse which was lying next to the bedroom door. She pushed her books and her millions other things to the side to access her phone that was lying at the very bottom of her large purse.

“Do you want to come to the movies with me and Ben tonight?”

Beatrice went back to the bed, her phone in her hands and said: “ I think she’s still sleeping. You should probably book only two-“

The vibration of her phone in her hands interrupted her. The only person Beatrice had texted today was Hero, two seconds ago. She sat down, unlocked her phone and smiled. 

“Forget what I said, book three tickets.”


End file.
